Missile Programs

Egypt maintains a highly developed weapons production capacity, second in
the Middle East only to Israel. In the early 1960s, President Gamal Abdel Nasser
pursued a crash missile production program with German assistance at "Factory
333" in Heliopolis, a few miles east of Cairo. (1) Three rockets were reportedly under development there: the 375-km range al Zafar, the 600-km range al Kahar, and the 1,000-km range al Raid. All three systems were canceled when the West German government put an end to the cooperation in 1966. (2) However, in the early 1970s the Soviet Union supplied Egypt with Frog-7s and Scud-Bs, a few of which were fired against Israel in the Yom Kippur War with little or no effect. (3)

Egypt is believed to have produced the Scud-B indigenously - perhaps modifying
them to extend their range - with some North Korean assistance. (4) An enhanced Scud-C (called "Project T"), with range/payload of 450 km/985 kg, is reported to have been developed and may be in service. (5)
In cooperation with the French Société Nationale des Poudres et Explosifs (SNPE), Egypt has developed, produced, and deployed the Sakr-80 rocket as a replacement for the aging Frog missiles. The factory in Sakr is responsible for producing the warheads, launchers and fire control systems for the Sakr-80. Various warheads were under development there in early 1988, including an HE armor piercing warhead, an antipersonnel/antimateriel submunition warhead, and an antitank minelet warhead; however, a chemical warhead was not planned. (6) According to a press report from June 1990, China has signed a protocol with Egypt to help modernize the Sakr missile factory, "enabling it to produce a newer version of Soviet antiaircraft missiles, the surface-to-surface Scud-B and Silkworm and the Egyptian Sakr rockets." (7)

Egypt began collaborating with Argentina on the Badr-2000 (which parallels the
Argentine Condor II) in 1984. The Badr/Condor II was to be an advanced two-stage,
solid-fuel, inertially guided ballistic missile, and was described as
"state-of-the-art." It was expected to deliver a 700 kg payload over 1,000 km,
accurate to within 100 meters. (8) In late September 1989, Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly testified to the House Foreign Affairs Middle East Subcommittee that Egypt had terminated its cooperation with Argentina and Iraq on the Condor II. (9) He did not explain when or why the Egyptians withdrew from the project. However, this move followed Egyptian embarrassment over the attempted smuggling, in June 1988, of 200 kg of carbon-carbon material, a material used as a protective coating for ballistic missile warheads. The Egyptian defense minister at the time, Abdel Halim Abu Ghazala, was implicated in the scandal, and was fired in April 1989. (10) Although the cancellation of the Condor II was a severe set-back to the Egyptian missile
program, the collaboration did enhance indigenous capabilities - as did North
Korean and other assistance - and provided considerable missile-related
technology that undoubtedly has been applied to the Scud improvement
program. (11)

Prior to the 171-nation vote in 1995 extending the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Egypt launched a high
visibility campaign to pressure Israel into signing the Treaty. Since the beginnings
of its nuclear program in the early 1960s, Israel has fostered a deliberate
ambiguity about whether it has developed and deployed operational nuclear
weapons and has refused to be a signatory to the NPT. This ambiguity has allowed Israel
to hold a nuclear Sword of Damocles over any potential Arab state threatening it
with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), while preserving its freedom from NPT constraints. Despite early
credible evidence that Israel was intent on becoming a nuclear weapons state and
Nasser's vow that, in response, Egypt would "secure atomic weapons at any cost,"
Egypt has apparently made no significant effort to allocate resources or seek
outside assistance in developing a nuclear weapons capability. (12) Nor is there any evidence that Egypt has attempted to develop chemical or biological warheads. Thus, Egypt shows no intention of converting its Scud-Bs and -Cs into WMD.

Concerning missile proliferation, Egypt, though not a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), does
not appear to be exploiting its presumed missile production capacity to market
these weapons. Resource constraints may be one explanation for Egypt's modest
missile capabilities. Another may be that its missile force has been developed only
to the level needed to maintain status as a leader among the Arab states and a
negotiator with the West. As the recipient of two billions dollars of U.S. aid
annually, Egypt has good reason to choose diplomatic pressure, rather than arming
Israel's enemies, to get Israel to sign the NPT as part of the Middle East peace
process. Its continuing diplomatic efforts bear this out.

Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Egypt collaborated with North Korea on ballistic missile development. An unclassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report to the United States Congress in 2001 stated that Egypt's relations with North Korea regarding ballistic missiles were long standing. However, over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, Egypt's international security situation steadily improved and by 2005, Egypt had severed ties with North Korea in the field of ballistic missile development in addition to curtailing its own medium and long-range ballistic missile ambitions.Since then, Egypt has been putting more emphasis on purchasing smaller scale weapon systems from the United States, ranging from Patriot-3 missile systems to Hellfire II anti-armor missiles.

RESOURCES

CIA Report to Congress (January-June 2001), Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, last accessed May 30, 2012